Yglesias's explanation makes sense, and the two really go together. If the people who you're used to hearing from about your work are all members of the same professional class with the same interests, and the same interests, their criticisms are going to be easier to take because they come from a familiar basis -- they'll sound sane to you.
Once you've got anyone with an internet connection complaining, the new perspectives are going to sound substantively unhinged because you're not used to them.
(That didn't quite come together, but there's something near it that makes sense.)
Nice try, ogged, but you actually wrote all those things in the thread below. No one's misrepresenting you.
Back to the Washington Monthly with you!
LB is basically right (this is actually a good rule in life), but it's also true that many people with internet connections are in fact substantively unhinged.
Well, yes, that too. Present company excluded, to some extent.
Once you've got anyone with an internet connection complaining, the new perspectives are going to sound substantively unhinged because you're not used to them.
It's also a result of many journalists being sheltered upper class types. Profanity = bringing out the smelling salts. This post could easily be titled, "Don't be such a pussy."
"Don't be a big girl's blouse," you vulgarian.
I sort of think excluding the present company from the categore of "unhinged people with internet connections" would be a mistake. More or less.
also, 7 & 8: misogynists.
Nuts to that. It's very satisfying to congratulate oneself on being the Continental Op in the conversation, hard-boiled, hard-eyed and always thirsty, but "[o]nce you've got anyone with an internet connection complaining," you realize how little most people have to say that is at all different from what everyone else has to say, and the charm of the global town meeting quickly erodes.
Bloggers can get too immune to criticism. Vitriol-thickened skin grows positively insensitive.
11 gets it right. I've gotten tremendously annoyed that The Onion AV Club includes all these comments at the bottom of its articles without the reader even clicking "see comments". 100% of these comments consist of unfunny people spouting hackneyed quips or stating the obvious. It makes me feel like an idiot to be reading the article, if these are the only other people who care about it.
It makes me feel like an idiot to be reading the article, if these are the only other people who care about it.
Labs said something similar about 300, not being able to enjoy it because he knew there were people out there taking it seriously. Christ, I'd never enjoy anything if I thought that way.
Wow, Yglesias's argument sounds awfully . . . familiar.
I have always assumed that the "people who are afraid" are afraid of the same thing that people who worry about being outsourced are afraid of: that someone will realize that (or something will change such that) their salary can't quite be justified on pure economic grounds. It seems pretty normal to fear that, and more so when the people making charge are doing it publicly and, worse, popularly.
12 gets it exactly right. A blogger has to make a continual effort to stay sensitive to good criticism, instead of taking an adversarial stance against all critics, reasonable or no.
Vitriol-thickened skin grows positively insensitive.
Yeah, this is a danger, and some bloggers are obviously suffering from its effects. I'm not sure whether it's the same as pundits and reporters who think that being criticized from both sides means they're doing a good job.
12 hates democracy. Bloggers will be readership number sensitive. So are old media types--the declining numbers of readers is what makes them feel vulnerable to the horrific abuse from bloggers.
If twelve constitutes hating democracy, then I hate democracy.
Remember the halcyon days when we quoted the bit we were responding to, rather than just citing the comment number? Let's try to move back into the light.
Bloggers will be readership number sensitive
Readership doesn't necessarily suffer when you become insensitive to criticism. Note, for example, Insty.
Readership doesn't necessarily suffer when you become insensitive to criticism. Note, for example, Insty.
Influence sensitive, then. Insty increasingly is held in bad odor by everyone from the center and to the left. I bet, whether he admits it or not, he would change that if he could. Sensitive/insensitive to criticism strikes me as a not very useful direction to take. It's like saying, "People should make the right decisions, and not the wrong ones." Yeah, okay, point taken.
The line that stuck out for me was As if before 1998 or so everyone sat around reading their morning New York Times with nary a peep of complaint. I fondly remember hanging out with friends on the weekend back in the day, looking at and making fun of the Sunday New York Times. I sure many people did (and do) the same. But what a shock it must have been for the Times folk to become aware of this fact and have to read about it online.
But what a shock it must have been for the Times folk to become aware of this fact and have to read about it online.
Worse for the Times than hearing it themselves is that now you are aware of the fact that a lot of other people do the same, and you can disabuse yourself of any secret fears you might have that, in fact, it's not the Times that's bad, but you as a reader.
I think it's more complicated than simply saying that they're unaccustomed to harsh criticism; news programs and the networks that carry them have been getting letters from viewers/listeners for decades and I seriously doubt those have all been of the polite variety. If it's the feedback that startles them I suspect it's that the feedback is so public. They don't just get criticized, they get criticized with a billboard rather than a letter they can shit-can in private.
They don't just get criticized, they get criticized with a billboard rather than a letter they can shit-can in private.
Right, and also some of the people criticizing them can't be dismissed as solitary loons, since some of the criticizers have significant audiences themselves.
[Since 9/11] we have had outpourings of new political speech through new methods and means, for example, uh, people I wish never existed -- bloggers.This did not exist before 9/11. Are we really in such a civil liberties crisis if bloggers are able to use this new media to say I think quite incredible things?
People I wish never existed include John Yoo.
The mental shift is happening really unevenly. I can't believe how many members of the print media still write/publish as if they are putting a print document on the web. The only group that seems to have adapted completely are the marketers. Instead of a print article with two jumps, we now have the manipulative phenomenon of the NYT magazine article with ten or eleven jumps.
And my hometown newspaper has more or less eliminated datelines in their online edition, which makes it frustratingly hard to tell when the "yesterday" in the article refers to. (They put a tiny, gray "dateline" showing time of upload far above the byline of the article, but that's almost worse than useless.)
23: Sensitive/insensitive to criticism strikes me as a not very useful direction to take.
The problem is (as it always has been) which criticism to take seriously and which to ignore. The volume of the stuff on the net makes determining that very difficult. After some time one can identify people to read and people to ignore but probably takes more effort than a busy blogger can afford if the idea is to keep the eyeball numbers high.
30: Ah, but the print version of the NY Times Magazine has had four or five jumps per article forever, to fit them around all the fixed real estate of ads and recipes and beach houses for sale. It's the world's most annoying magazine to read. Online we can just go to the printable version and be happy.
29: I know this makes me a bad person, but I'm going to find it genuinely appalling when Yoo's kids don't get beat up every day at school because of their father. Possibly this makes me a very bad person.
Right, and also some of the people criticizing them can't be dismissed as solitary loons, since some of the criticizers have significant audiences themselves.
I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of an organized group of solitary loons is clearly scary to a lot of people.
Online we can just go to the printable version
True. I often default to the printable version, although very few other people I know have this habit. Maybe this is like that discussion we had about different styles of clicking/scrolling while reading.
If bullies did beat Yoo's kids up, the President would have the authority to crush the bullies' testicles. We're at war, people.
I sometimes think that, over the decades with all of the criticism from the Nutty Right, journalists have come to regard ignoring criticism as an important professional value. And all the while they internalized the right-wing critique.
33: It does. It's not the kids' fault.
38, I think he's alluding to Woo's specific endorsement of the theory that the President has the authority to torture the children of a suspected terrorist in order to try to force him to cooperate.
I hope he is, anyway.
Tim, I was all going to agree with you, then you had to tell me I hate democracy.
You're right in 17: this is about pundits being in a line of work where there's no measure of your productivity, and you think your value lies in being right. Then your wrongness gets exposed on a daily basis, and a bunch of punks are threatening your livelihood in their spare time. (You'd think this phenomenon would hit pro-offshoring types like Thomas Friedman especially hard, but you would be wrong, (a) because some people really are immune to criticism and (b) it's become clear that your value really doesn't lie in being right, at all: it's in meeting word-count on deadline and saying something that doesn't sound too weird.)
You're wrong in 20, if by "sensitivity to criticism" we can mean, "in the bowels of Christ, man, consider the possibility you may be mistaken." It's nothing to do with democracy.
And you're wrong in 20 because bloggers aren't readership-number-sensitive, inasmuch as most of them aren't in it for the money. Except, of course, ogged, who's all about the black Mercedes.
Also, all* blog commenters subtract value from discourse.
*I would say present company excepted, and mean it, but I don't need to: this site constitutes a statistical anomaly meaningfully ignorable in view of the godawful norm, so small it might as well be measurement error.
34: I find Free Republic scary myself.
At least the guys in Minutemen clubs are letting off steam, arm-wrestling, drinking beer and the like. Free Republicans are just sitting there getting madder and madder.
36: "crush the bullies' testicles"
Or force them to bear children they don't want.
38: I really kind of wish I cared about that. Too angry, I guess.
39: No, not really. I want Yoo's pain. I want a lot of it, forever. I'd love it if he (and others) were driven from this country by hate. But there's no avenue to accomplish that. But kids are sensitive and vulnerable to other kids in a way that seems, somehow, if not acceptable, still not capital letter "W" wrong. And parents are vulnerable to their kids. Or so I've been told.
(No, Mr. G-man, this isn't indicative of planning or soemthing, you psycho. It's an expression of anger, and that's all.)
They're also aware enough to be sensitive to the demographic: it's the people known to be best-informed who are most influenced by blogs and their opinions. It hurts their self-esteem both because they want to be liked by the cool, and their imaginery target audience of judicious, well-informed people has become dissonant, now that it actually has a voice.
Tim, I was all going to agree with you, then you had to tell me I hate democracy.
I was going to say you hate America, but I always say that to you when I disagree with you. The variation was done out of love, though possibly it made it look like a substantive comment.
39: Specifically, that the executive has the right to crush the testicles of the children of a terrorist suspect, which was the question put to Yoo, and to which he answered yes. If there were any justice in the world, John Yoo would get spit on everywhere he went for the rest of his life.
Does anybody know Yoo's background, enough to say what moral tradition his family would have come out of, what political history?
Sometimes people become like that for idiocentric reasons, sometimes not.
Does anybody know Yoo's background, enough to say what moral tradition his family would have come out of, what political history?
From a long line of testicle crushers, I'd guess.
"You go to democracy with the public you have, not the public you wish you had...."
Where have I heard this coinage before? In your context, it makes perfect sense. My only problem is that the minter of this currency was arrogant, and the original context was offensive and counterfeit.
Reading it in this context leaves the same lingering bad taste. Not your fault, of course and I am not being critical. Its just that Rummy constructs are not credible and not worthy of being quotable.
ogged blames immigrants for Yoo. But then what explains Addington?
Leave people's kids out of it....I take out my guilt-by-association impulses by wishing ill on the Federalist Society.
In my ignorance, I'm aware of only two other blogs with readable comments. One is Making Light, and the other I can't remember.
Okay, so you know how in Firefox the Google search bar suggests phrases when you start to type a search term -- not phrases you've searched before, but phrases other people are searching? I just typed in "John Yoo" and the fifth choice down was "John Yoo testicles."
"John Yoo testicles."
I'm sure I'm not the only person who immediately thought: great band name.
From a long line of testicle crushers, I'd guess.
From a long line of eventual testicle crushers, you mean.
Wait, you didn't mean self-crushers.
Does anybody know Yoo's background, enough to say what moral tradition his family would have come out of, what political history?
His father and mother are psychiatrists who grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. They emigrated in 1967, when Yoo was 3 months old. They sought three things, he said: education, economic opportunity and democracy. ... Coming of age in an anti-communist household, Yoo said, he associated strong opposition to communist rule with the Republican Party and was himself "attracted to Reagan's message."
There's a little more where that came from.
53: Obsidian Wings's comments are off their feed lately, but they're generally interesting, or have been in the past.
Obsidian Wings's comments are off their feed lately
Euphemism.
44: You're angry? Do you write your own material? Because I have never seen anybody use being angry as an excuse before. What an innovation. Especially, you know, with the "I really kind of wish I cared about that," and the touch of Gary Cooper regret. Wow. Just wow. That is pure gold. I mean, you put the rest of us to shame. I wish I'd thought of that, but now I sure don't want to step on your toes. I'd better watch out!
Seriously, like my daddy said, being angry is not an excuse.
In my opinion the US government should avoid modelling its law enforcement policies after those of Park Chung-hee. Despite the superiority of his policies to those of Kim Il-Sung, they are not ideal.
Obviously each site cultivates a certain type of commenter, and a certain method of commenting. Before four days ago, people actually used to read the other comments on my blog before writing exactly the same damn thing someone else said, and so forth. But the commentary that really hurts, and can't be stopped, is that which happens at another site. In addition to the people telling me on my blog that I'm a miserable teacher who deserves to die, I have now found posts on other blogs saying I'm a miserable teacher who deserves to die. And a couple of years ago, I found a post about my blog that imagined me as a nasty graduate student in sweaty underthings who deserved to be repeatedly raped. Fun! Yay for democracy!
And I recognize that these shocks--and I feel them as shocks, since I'm used to somewhat more reasonable arguments with my positions--make me momentarily fearful, followed by a thickness of skin that I'd probably rather not have. This is the price of being a blogger, but, additionally, it's the price of being a female blogger.
But those suckers in the Old Media never really felt the sting of substantive criticism. They're not complaining about vague "I want Brooks's head!" stuff; they're complaining because much of what blogs do is unpin or find stupid patterns in the rhetoric of someone like Friedman or Dowd. This is the kind of criticism I'm writing in order to get. It's the kind of criticism that makes them feel stupid and bourgeois.
That is, when a newpaper writer gets death threats, at least in the old school days, that was a sign that his writing was a success. Death threats are nothing new to them, the way they are to me. But real, substantive criticism? What's that?
testicle crushers
With the new, thicker skin, they're much harder to crush.
62: Sometimes when people use the word "bourgeois," I am reminded that the bourgeoisie has enemies on the right, as well as the left, and that not everyone who condemns bourgeois decadence has in mind a world like Breughel's Kermess.
63: I think that we would be lying to ourselves if we thought that journalists had never gotten "real, substantive criticism" before the Magic Numbers Box made it possible for a few "Maureen Dowd shouldn't write so much about haircare" comments to float in among the "Russell Baker shall suffer the wrath of Moloch the Illegitimate, and my hand shall be Moloch's instrument, for the Book of Disapprobations says that all who write Sunday Times columns shall be chipped and broken by the righteous" crayon-scrawlings.
I think that we would be lying to ourselves if we thought that journalists had never gotten "real, substantive criticism" before the Magic Numbers Box
I don't know this to be the case, but I would surmise that writing letters to a journalist complaining about their work was much more class-restricted (outside the nutcases) than it is in the era of the M.N.B. Sending a letter to a stranger complaining about their work is a very unrewarding activity unless you believe that it will affect them, and that belief is going to be tied up in thinking of yourself as the sort of person journalists listen to. Now that any random nitwit can talk about journalistic incompetence to a broad audience, it's not so much that they're getting substantive criticism when they'd never gotten it before, but that they're getting substantive criticism from people who'd never given them any before.
66: Exactly. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a (young, black, male) student about why young, black, male adults don't vote. (This was the evidence behind a paper he was writing for another class.) He kept saying, "All my friends say they don't vote because it won't make a difference, just one vote out of millions," and I was like, "So are rich white dudes, who always vote, just worse at math? No, they just have an inflated sense of their own importance in the world. They believe they'll have sway because they always have." I don't write letters because I don't believe anyone reads them. And besides, I'm not interested in changing the columnist's mind; that's not going to happen. I'm interested in fucking with the readers' responses to that columnist.
The most important difference is that while in the past an editor decided which few criticisms would get published -- and they could choose those which were coherent and advanced the conversation -- now all criticisms get published for everyone to see.
That is, I don't think it's the criticism, but the publication.
(For example, it's certainly possible that one student said to another, about AWB, that she's not that good at what she does and should perhaps find another field. Part of life, and one expects this sort of thing. What makes the current situation much less tolerable is not only that people can say this for the whole world to see, but that people who don't know jack about her teaching [except as her text interacts with their prejudices] feel competent and have the means to do so as well.)
Papers have received letters critiquing their work before. They print them in the paper. Sometimes, the critique is even substantive. But published letters-to-the-editor complaints, even with a potential audience of millions, wouldn't have hundreds of people visibly agreeing with the complaints just a click away.
Plus, it's easier to have a critique. Becks probably wouldn't write into the Sunday Styles section every week telling them they were fools, but she'll do it here, and she'll have at least forty people agreeing.
How many blogs actually solicit and consider demanding critiques of their work? (I'm really asking, I don't know.) Certainly there must be a proportion that do, and a bunch that write to the choir and enjoy everyone telling themselves how right they were in the comments. Do we think that the proportion who write to get critiqued and the proportion that write to get agreement is different between blogs and newspapers?
68: At the 13,000 hit mark for just yesterday, I decided to delete the post. I'm getting emails now that I closed comments, saying, "Too bad you closed comments because I've got a great one you need to read. Here it is!" Oh yay.
It's mirrored everywhere now. Let 'em find it.
I think it's the combination of:
--impolite & really harsh criticisms--your colleagues generally won't be that way even if they want to; you guys are in the same club and it's just not done.
--but they're not from complete cranks or nutjobs who write you death threats.
--A large # of people--a small % of the country, but a large % of political junkies--who broadly agree with each other about what's wrong with the media. These aren't isolated letters to the editor complaining about one article. Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald and, say, Brad DeLong are stylistically different from Atrios, but they're complaining about the same stuff, and it's not the right-wing critique that they heard for years and somewhat internalized.
68: At the 13,000 hit mark for just yesterday, I decided to delete the post. I'm getting emails now that I closed comments, saying, "Too bad you closed comments because I've got a great one you need to read. Here it is!" Oh yay.
I feel you. It'll wind down in a week or so, right? No one goes back to read week-old links, right?
testicle crushers
With the new, thicker skin, they're much harder to crush.
Much easier if they're in boxers than in briefs.
Also, Westicle Crushler would be a good band name.
It also means that the mantle of authority is less permanent. If I'm Friedman writing op-eds for the NYT, I have a bully pulpit to speak from and the institutional weight of the Times behind me. I know that I was appointed to my post because my peers, a pretty narrowly defined group, liked my work. And I don't have to re-earn that respect all the time. (Who was it the other day comparing it to lifetime tenure?)
But now Friedman's pool of competitors has expanded significantly. They're earning legitimacy in a somewhat more transparent way, through the links and quotes from peers (yes, peers = public). And Friedman's mantle is being pulled and tugged and sniped at from a variety of angles. He's no longer behind a one-way mirror.
That has to be disconcerting. I find blog triumphalism as off-putting as the next person, but there is quite a lot to be said for being able to make a public, shared critique.
60: It wasn't an excuse or a justification, it was a description. Insofar as it wasn't an excuse or a justification, I suppose it was an admission that it was inexcusable and unjustifiable.
--but they're not from complete cranks or nutjobs who write you death threats.
I think this is a big part of it. Below there was some discussion of blogs as methods for selecting potential dates. I think blogs do sort people surprisingly well. Yglesias gets a pretty specific sort of crowd, and even his troll (Al) is a quality one. Yglesias and some of his commenters are the sort of people that someone at a decent paper is going to think is his best audience, and even his social circle.
It's a bit like the Rove thing about the benefits of on-the-ground grassroots efforts in getting Republican votes: you are more likely to listen to someone you trust on other grounds. I don't think it's immaterial that Atrios has a PhD in Economics, for example.
Flippanter
Shouldn't this be "More Flippant"? I keep thinking of a dolphin.
77: I was originally combining "flippant" and "instanter," actually, but now I too think of that particular dolphin. Dolphins are cool, though.
76: Yglesias' commenters are very serious. They usually ignore my jokes. (Not today, though).
Perhaps Sausagely's admission that he likes Bud, in combination with his praise of Spiderman 3, has jarred the normally staid residents of Sausageland. First they will laugh at your jokes; then they will say that Montreal post-rock isn't very good; finally they will split between writing rabid pro-Iraq War and Social Security privitization manifestos and calling for the last priest to be hung using the guts of the last capitalist. Laughing at Emerson is the sign of all that is solid melting into air in this world of Bud-drinking liminality.
Also, they will adopt the no-relationship policy.
IHNJH,IJLWTRTF : "There's no doubt that you'll be called names, misunderstood, misrepresented, and ascribed views you don't hold" and "vitriol-thickened skin grows positively insensitive."
Anyhow. Give it 10 years and blogging will be widely recognized as just another Main Stream Medium. I see little difference anymore anyway, since "the weird" have turned pro and sell advertising space, but then my view might be skewed by the fact that I don't watch TV or listen to the radio and approach most Real World media through my DSL connection. On maximized browsers on a 17" monitor currently set at 1024x768.
"No one goes back to read week-old links, right?"
Even when Stanley assigns them?
bloggers aren't readership-number-sensitive, inasmuch as most of them aren't in it for the money
I don't think this is true--most bloggers get all excited when they get a link, plus the endless griping about the rankings. It's not ads, but ego that make people sensitive about this stuff.
That said, I'm pretty sure that there's a sweet spot of about 2-3000 readers where you can get good discussion, beyond which comments start deteriorating. Also that once you settle into a kind of shtick where people know what to expect from you, comments start deteriorating.
83.3 strikes me as insightful, as well as broadly applicable to different forms of online communication given somewhat different numbers.
I don't think it's the number of readers that matter so much (as long as you have at least 500 or so daily visits) because even if you have 10,000 readers, you can make it so only a small number are interested in commenting, and that those people are required to act in a certain way (polite, substantial contributions) and all the others don't bother. It just takes more work when you get big, because you need more moderating. Most big bloggers don't care enough, or are too weird about moderating liberally.
Personally, I would love to have 10,000 readers, but that would require posting more often than once a month.
This is true. I click through to anybody's blog who has one, often several times a day (I don't think it's actual OCD, but like that) and you've been slacking. Post more; I'm bored.
"I have no joke here; I just, like, want to read the fucking"?
I think that ideally what you have is regular commenters who make fun of people who violate the (maybe unwritten) rules of the place. That happens a lot here, and it's what makes the less articulate or witty among us reluctant to participate, in general. The key is to allow disagreement, so you don't become too ideologically homogeneous. For instance, at PZ's blog, you don't have good comments at all. (Of course, I'm not sure that it's possible give the subject matter of his blog and the kind of commenters that attracts.)
I would love to have more than 15 readers.
You probably shouldn't be writing a dissertation, in that case.
86: Bored? It's just that you've grown accustomed to the deluge of work, isn't it?
Just you wait, Gonerill; my diss. is going to be widely read by all the intelligentsia.
Does anyone know if my hosting company's site statistics for daily hits will be anything like accurate? At one point I was getting nearly a thousand hits a day, but I have no idea how many of those would be robots, and I don't feel like installing sitemeter.
"Hits" are pretty misleading, because usually that means the number of requests the host has fulfilled. Just loading the Unfogged front page counts as ~5 hits, because there's the request for the page and for each embedded picture that's hosted by us. And a basic hit counter doesn't differentiate between users, so if someone loads the page and then reloads a minute later, suddenly we've got 10 hits. More sophisticated tracking programs use javascript and IP addresses to try to count visitors.
95: My unique visits were something like 70% of total hits (or page views, or however my host presented it), so I'm more wondering about robots vs. real people. Javascript would mostly take care of that, I guess.
my diss. is going to be widely read by all the intelligentsia
So that's maybe 13 or 14 readers right there.
The robots who read The Poor Man tell me they enjoy it, but I'm not so sure.
I've been thinking about what AWB said up there -- largely because I went through the same thing, about the same thing, barely two months back. (And to the person praising OW's comment section, let me direct your attention here.) It's also because I want to change the tenor of the comments on my own blog. As I wrote yesterday about my recent experiment:
I thought it akin to being on a spaceship and trapping half the crew in a hanger deck. At first, they'd be confused; then they'd be concerned; after a while, they'd start to try to entertain themselves ... and people who didn't know each other (or didn't know each other well) would start to talk to each other. Old antagonisms would fall to the wayside and everyone would interact on a level they hadn't before. (The music mini-thread is a perfect example of this.) Then, of course, the oxygen would run low and everyone would get a little giddy ... at which point I'd return with a wrench and a laser and open the blast doors manually. Everyone would disperse, but they'd remember the experience they'd shared and think more fondly both of each other and the ship that'd nearly killed them.
I'm not sure whether it'll work -- I may have done nothing more than exhaust the goodwill of my lurkers -- but it was worth an effort. (Also, the immediate downgrade from "Large Mammal" to "Adorable Rodent" was nice ... if a bit off-putting, what with me being a future English professor.)
(Actually, I blame the downgrade on 1) B. killing her blogroll and 2) Sifu and the Editors not linking to me. All this means is that when B. and I present in, um, next week I'll have to try not to scroll down if I use visual aids.)
Oh right, I need to do something about the blogroll. And that talk. And that book essay. Fuck.
"I have no joke here; I just, like, want to read the fucking"?
Oh, "IHNJH,IJLWTRTF" was mistyped, I changed neurons in midstream: IHNJH,IJWTRTF -- '...I just want to repeat the following.' (To wit: "There's no doubt that you'll be called names, misunderstood, misrepresented, and ascribed views you don't hold" and "vitriol-thickened skin grows positively insensitive.")
And re 90: except when one of them makes an in retrospect astoundingly thudding debut comment like mine here, I'm sure. In my own defense, where I was housesitting my fanatical plunging was so stupendously ineffective that the toilet was stopped up for THREE DAYS before I finally got the owner to get a plumber; that night I was quite literally WAY too full of shit.
I'll have to try not to scroll down if I use visual aids.
Just have a wank before the talk.
Just have a wank before the talk.
That won't do for me; the HMO quit covering Viagra.
And that talk. And that book essay.
I find it amusing that I know what you're talking about because I'm working on the same talk and an essay for the same journal. They should diversify, but I'm glad they aren't.
90: "readers" s/b "goddamned dicks"